


In the Darkness.

by swaneewhistleandkazoo



Category: Carnival Row (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Dreams and Nightmares, F/M, Fantastic Racism, Grief/Mourning, Hopeful Ending, Interspecies Romance, Murder, Philo likes climbing, Pre series, True Love, Unseelie Jack, pre episode 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-10-12 16:42:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20567555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swaneewhistleandkazoo/pseuds/swaneewhistleandkazoo
Summary: Pre series. After Unseelie Jack's most recent murder, Philo suffers from a nightmare.





	In the Darkness.

**Author's Note:**

> Slight spoilers for the show and warning for description of head injury.

Part of him knows that he’s having a nightmare_._

That his mind is playing tricks on him and that the slight faerie body lying shattered, broken and lifeless in a pool of her own blood on the cobblestones isn’t her.

Isn’t his Vignette.

But he’s lived so long with the fear of losing her like this that right now in this nightmare he can’t separate his fears from reality.

_*_

_Time feels like it has slowed to a trickle as he fights his way through the crowd, eyes fixed on the body crumpled face down on the cobbles. His breath is sawing painfully in and out of his chest, his heart is pounding, surging with dread and his legs are shaking like he’s sprinted the width of the Burgue. Which vaguely he recalls that he has in fact run the length of the Row after the report came in that Unseelie Jack has struck again and murdered a young faerie woman. He hadn’t even waited for the order for him to investigate to be issued before grabbing his coat and hat from his desk at the Constabulary and raced off, feet pounding slapping hard against the pavement. _

_He wished he could fly._

_“Please Martyr, St Tatiana, any of the gods if you’re there.” he begged them silently as he was buffeted by the crowd of frightened fae folk. “If you ever grant me anything please let her be safe, that’s all I ask” The shrill shriek of the constabulary whistles slicing through the air reverberated faintly in his ears over the hammering rush of his blood._

_It isn’t her, isn’t her, it can’t be her. She’s safe in Anoun, high in the mountains, safe and free where the Pact could never find her and without the weight of a flightless half blood dragging her down._

_At least that’s what he tells himself. _

_A faun knocked into him, nearly sending him flying. Deftly he found his feet again and turned to snarl at the faun. But the stark terror in the fauns rolling eyes made him bite his tongue, he can smell the fear in the air like the sharp metallic stink before the Pact attacked, real and visceral. They’re being hunted, if life wasn’t hard enough for them already, every three week and his fellow Constabulary officers are doing sod all about it. _

_Maybe if it were their loved ones, their kind they’d do more about it._

_Infuriated he pushed forward and bellowed for the crowd to make way for him which surprisingly worked and the sweaty jostling bodies parted just enough for him to pick his way through. Finally he’s spat out and he can see the body properly. _

_His heart stops in his chest. _

_He can feel his feet moving without conscious prompting over towards the face down body of the young faerie woman. Her short brown hair and braids are matted with dried blood, clothes torn and dishevelled covered with the dirt of the city but underneath all the muck he could just about make out the faintest impression of the original greenish brown colour. Her body is lying crumpled, just discarded in the alleyway, wings splayed and twisted at awkward angles like she’d tried to fly away and had been snatched out of the air and held down. _

_There is blood under her fingernails, she’d fought for her life._

_Her skull, even after everything he’d seen during the war he still had to swallow hard to stop his breakfast from making reappearance and by the acidic tinge in the air some of his fellow officers hadn’t been able be able to. Some bastard had bludgeoned her, he could see the craters where the claw hammer had struck, shattering the fragile bone. _

_The sounds of the crowd dimmed as he knelt beside her body, like he was underwater all he could hear was the blood rushing in his ears and the sawing of his breath in and out of his chest. Up close he could see the terrible wounds oozing blood and clear fluid, the grey of brain matter and the white splinters of bone. Very carefully he slowly reached out and grasped her thin shoulder, the soft velvety material so familiar under his palm. _

_She was so light it took barely any effort to roll her over so he could see her face. _

_Vignette. _

_Her green eyes are open and staring but apart from the trickle of dried blood out of the corner of her mouth she was still as perfect as the day he’d left her._

_A sob caught in his chest and he gathered her to him, rocking her lifeless body. And heedless of the gathered and gawking crowd, of his fellow constabulary officers and his secret he held the body of only person who’d ever seen and loved all of him and wept. _

*

Philo bolted awake, his ribcage moving like bellows, ragged and painful, as he tried to work past the scream caught in his throat. His blankets were tangled around his legs and he kicked frantically to free himself. Too dazed and confused to full comprehend where he was and whether or not he was still dreaming, struggling to keep his pounding heart from bursting out of his sweat soaked bare chest. For a moment he felt utterly helpless.

The scars where his wings should have been flared with agony and he could feel them trying to beat, a desperate electric thrum underneath his skin, he choked back a cry of pain.

With a final violent twist he wrenched himself free and half fell, half launched himself out of bed. His legs and arms felt clumsy and uncoordinated and he almost surrendered to gravity but the driving animal panic he felt kept him upright. Staggering, bashing his knee on the side of his chest of draws he staggered over to his work desk and wrenched open the draw.

Groping desperately with numbed fingers he felt around in the semi darkness for his most precious possession. His fingers brushed and closed around the smooth semi-precious stones and cool metal of Vignette’s braid. Almost immediately the crushing terror and pain in his chest began to lessen and he held it tightly in his fist still breathing hard he closed his eyes and pressed her braid to his lips and pretended she was there with him.

He could almost feel her arms around him soothing and steadying him, felt the thrum of her pulse in her throat and her fingers stroking gently at the scars where the base of his wings should be her touch, a balm against the ever present ache there. Swallowing hard and with unshed tears burning in his eyes he cradled it to his chest.

It was just a dream.

For a heart stopping moment when he’d turned the faerie woman over she’d looked so much like Vignette that his eyes had fallen shut and felt himself sway alarmingly. His entire world and he hadn’t been able to save her in the end. With gritted teeth he’d forced himself to look again and although the faerie woman had resembled Vignette closely enough that they could have been sisters or cousins, her hair was to light, her eyes the wrong colour.

It wasn't her.

Relief welled up inside him twinned with guilt that he was relieved that someone else had died.

As he’d lain her carefully on the ground and began going through the motions of searching for evidence, he’d wondered sadly if she was indeed one of Vignette’s kin. Curled up in their bed she’d mentioned that most of her family were killed by the Pact but had confided her hope that maybe some had escaped in the chaos. The idea that she had and reached the relative safety of the Burgue only to have her future snatched away from her. Vaguely he’d tasted blood and realised he’d bitten the inside of his cheek.

Abruptly he felt too hot and lurched over to the window and with a trembling hand undid the latch and let the cool night breeze caress his overheated body and braced himself against the window frame. He hung his head, it felt like it was a great painful weight his neck was suddenly unable to support. His hands gripped hard edges of the windowsill, his body as taunt as a wire. Staring down at his arms he could see the outline of each muscle under his skin standing stark around the bones of his arms thanks to all the pressure he was funnelling into his hands. Vignettes braid dug into his palm leaving little crescent shaped dimples in his palm he was gripping it so tightly.

Thank the Martyr, Portia wasn’t here tonight. He didn’t think he could tolerate anyone’s touch right now other that Vignette’s. Guilt weighed heavily upon him that he was unable to return the feelings Portia felt for him, maybe if he’d never met Vignette. But he’d known from the moment they’d been together in the cave that his heart would always belong to her.

Absently he realised he was tracing the edge of one of his scars with his free hand and feeling claustrophobic he ducked out of the window and clambered up onto the roof. Delicately placing one foot in front of the other along a pipe and a swift jump to land cat like onto the parapet, he sat with his legs swinging freely over the edge of the roof and looked out over the ramshackle rooftops of the city.

Heights had never bothered him in fact he’d always rather liked the peace and quiet of rooftops provided. At the foundry and among his fellow soldiers during his training he’d delighted in showing off and scaring people with his death defying antics up trees and on top of buildings. It was only in Tirnanoc when he was among the Fae, watching Vignette dance deftly from one boulder to another as deftly as he did had he’d begun to wonder if it was a left over ability from his faerie parent. A culturally call back to the mountainous regions the Fae called their homeland maybe?

It was cold up there especially without a shirt on and the wind whistled fiercely in his ears but the stillness of the city its residents slumbering if he closed his eyes and just listened to wind he could pretend he was back at the library in the Tirnanese highlands of Anoun and waiting for Vignette to come and talk with him.

At least in his memories she’d always be with him.

Reverently he looked at the little braid in his hand and stroked it with his thumb. He’d carried with him everywhere at first habitually reaching into his pocket to run his thumb over the smooth edges until one day he’d reached in and found it empty. Feverishly he’d searched everywhere for it, down on his hands and knees, tearing apart his room and desk at the Constabulary, even unpicking the stitching in his coat until he’d found it again. After apologising for the destruction he’d caused in his search he’d decided that is was best if he left the only thing he had left of her safely in his desk.

Although he still found himself reaching into his pocket for it for comfort. 

Wherever she was he hoped she was safe, that she’d mourned his supposed death and moved on even as he was unable to. Eyes closed he could see her, her expression fierce and intense as she glared at him across the courtyard of the library, soft and alive with wonder as she focused on a book, relaxed and languid with sleep as she curled up by his side.

His memories of her, of them together combined with the wind gusting around him blew away the residual cobwebs of his nightmare and he could think clearly again. The moon was full and bathing everything with silver light, as he looked out over the city and contemplated his foe. If everything stayed true to the pattern of the last few murders he’d have three weeks to track down Unseelie Jack and stop him from taking the life of another innocent fae.

Philo stood, balancing carelessly on the edge of the drop, very faintly in the east the sky was brightening and the city was beginning to stir, he could make out shadows within the darkness winding their way to places of work.

He gripped Vignette’s braid tightly in his fist and watched the city being to wake up. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
